Long before I knew the Russian
work, that melancholy play,
I found out joy by feeding
gulls bread from the ferry
stern. Crossing Okracoke
Sound they’d gather above us
hover like angels, like harpies
from books, conjurations all
beaks, claws, wings though more
benign. Scraps I’d toss would
arc and bend above the wake,
hold weightless as if appetite,
and greedy eyes were magic
enough to break earth’s law
of falling things. Sometimes I’d
grab my pole, break off shrimp
chunks big enough for fish and
thread them on the shiny hook,
caution not to catch on hand,
ear, thigh (or even worse) when
casting line like spiders. Till
one of many morning gulls
caught the bait still descending
to the sea where I’d seen blues
shimmering in schools that day.
It swallowed, faltered, choked,
broke the frantic air with cries,
fell, more Breugel’s feathered
boy than bird, more Picasso’s
screaming horse than bard, its
bloody tongue an accusation, as if
war or hunger really were a crime.

M. Quickmon Willis believes, “There are no losses! Even the manure of life can make the dandiest fertilizer. Language, like all gifts, is a stewardship from The Creator to Whom I must give an account.” After a 17 year European hiatus he returned from Munich in July 2004 to work on an MFA in poetry at Queens University of Charlotte. Currently he resides in coastal N.C. where, as a descendent of shore whalers and Lumbee Indian farmers, he was raised before moving abroad.